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David Levithan

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David Levithan
Levithan at the 2018 Texas Teen Book Festival
Levithan at the 2018 Texas Teen Book Festival
Born (1972-09-07) September 7, 1972 (age 52)
Short Hills, New Jersey, U.S.
OccupationWriter, editor
NationalityAmerican
EducationDouble major in English and Political Science
Alma materBrown University
Period2003–present
GenreYoung adult fiction; fantasy, supernatural fiction
Notable works
Notable awardsLambda Literary Award
2003 Boy Meets Boy
Lambda Literary Award
2006 The Full Spectrum
Signature
Website
davidlevithan.com

David Levithan (born September 7, 1972) is an American young adult fiction author and editor.[1] He has written numerous works featuring strong male gay characters, most notably Boy Meets Boy and Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List.[2] Six of Levithan's books have won or been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, making him the most celebrated author in the category.

Early life and career

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Levithan was born and raised in the Short Hills section of Millburn, New Jersey, to a family of Jewish background,[3] graduating in 1990 from Millburn High School.[4] At nineteen, Levithan received an internship at Scholastic Corporation where he began working on The Baby-Sitters Club series. Levithan still works for Scholastic as an editorial director. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a young-adult imprint of Scholastic Press focusing on new voices and new authors.[1] PUSH publishes edgier material for young adults and is where Patricia McCormick got her start with 2002's Cut.[5]

In an interview with Barnes & Noble, Levithan said that he learned how to write books that were both funny and touching from Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He continues to work as both a writer and editor saying, "I love editing just as much, if not more than writing".[5]

Three of Levithan's novels have been made into films. His first collaboration with Rachel Cohn, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, was published in 2006 and adapted for the big screen in 2008. Levithan's 2012 novel of the same name was adapted into Every Day, a romantic fantasy drama, released in 2018. His second collaboration with Rachel Cohn, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List, was published in 2007 and adapted into a film of the same name in 2015.

Levithan has been a resident of Hoboken, New Jersey.[6]

In 2016, Levithan won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for The Realm of Possibility, Boy Meets Boy, Love Is the Higher Law, How They Met and Other Stories, Wide Awake, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.[7]

In 2024, an anthology of short stories Levithan contributed to, The Collectors: Stories, won the Michael L. Printz Award.[8]

Works

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Novels

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Young adult novels

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Disaster Zone series:

  1. In the Eye of the Tornado (1998)
  2. In the Heart of the Quake (1998)

Likely Story series (with David Ozanich and Chris Van Etten; as David Van Etten):

  1. Likely Story (2008)
  2. All That Glitters (2008)
  3. Red Carpet Riot (2009)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson series:

  1. Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010), with John Green
  2. Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story (2015)

Dash & Lily series, with Rachel Cohn:

  1. Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (2010)
  2. The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily (2016)
  3. Mind the Gap, Dash & Lily (2020)

Every Day series:

  1. Every Day (2012)
  2. Another Day (2015)
  3. Someday (2018)

Stand-alones:

Young adult short stories

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Collections:

  • How They Met, and Other Stories (2008), collection of 18 short stories:
    "Starbucks Boy", "Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat", "The Alumni Interview", "The Good Witch", "The Escalator, a Love Story", "The Number of People who Meet on Airplanes", "Andrew Chang", "Flirting with Waiters", "Lost Sometimes", "Princes", "Breaking and Entering", "Skipping the Prom", "A Romantic Inclination", "What a Song Can Do", "Without Saying", "How They Met", "Memory Dance", "Intersection"
  • Six Earlier Days (2012), Every Day series #0.5, collection of 6 short stories:
    "Day 3722", "Day 2919", "Day 5624", "Day 5909", "Day 5915", "Day 5931"
  • 19 Love Songs (2020), collection of 16 short stories, 2 poems and 1 comic:
    "Quiz Bowl Antichrist", "Day 2934" (Every Day series #0.1), "The Good Girls", "The Quarterback and the Cheerleader" (a Boy Meets Boy story), "The Mulberry Branch" (poem), "Your Temporary Santa", "Storytime", "A Better Writer", "8-Song Memoir", "Snow Day" (a Two Boys Kissing story), "The Woods", "A Brief History of First Kisses" (comic), "As the Philadelphia Queer Youth Choir Sings Katy Perry's 'Firework'", "The Vunerable Hours", "Twelve Months", "The Hold", "How My Parents Met", "We", "Give Them Words" (poem)

Uncollected short stories:

  • "A Word From the Nearly Distant Past", story in How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity (2009)
  • "The Skeleton Keeper", story in Bones: Terrifying Tales to Haunt Your Dreams (2010)
  • "Day 3196", Every Day series #0.2, first published in the National Book Store edition of Someday (2018)

Comics

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Non-fiction

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  • Malcolm in the Middle Scrapbook: Malcolm's Family Album (2000), scrapbook
  • Journey Through the Lost Canyon (2000), guide
  • 101 Ways to Get Away With Anything! (Malcolm in the Middle), or Malcolm's Really Useful Guide to Getting Away with Anything! (2002), guide
  • 101 Ways to Stop Being Bored! (2003), guide

Anthologies and novels edited

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  • You Are Here, This is Now: The Best Young Writers and Artists in America: A Push Anthology (2002)
  • Friends: Stories about New Friends, Old Friends and Unexpectedly True Friends, ed. with Ann M. Martin (2005)
  • When We Are, What We See: A Push Anthology (2005)
  • The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Other Identities, ed. with Billy Merrell (2006)
  • 21 Proms, ed. with Daniel Ehrenhaft (2007)
  • We Are Quiet, We Are Loud: The best young writers and artists in America: a Push anthology (2008)
  • How to Say Goodbye in Robot, a novel by Natalie Standiford (2009)
  • The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a novel by Suzanne Collins (2020)

Novelizations

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Adaptations

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Further reading

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References

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  1. ^ a b "David Levithan". October 30, 2008. Gale Database. Contemporary Authors Online. UWM Golda Meir Library, Milwaukee. July 1, 2009.
  2. ^ "Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List". www.goodreads.com. Archived from the original on 2014-06-02. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  3. ^ "JBooks.com - Interviews and Profiles: David Levithan: "Teen Literature Kicks Ass"". jbooks.com. Archived from the original on 2021-04-13. Retrieved 2019-05-29.
  4. ^ DeSisto, Danielle. "Author advocates for love, acceptance through books" Archived 2021-04-11 at the Wayback Machine, The Item of Millburn and Short Hills, June 14, 2016. Accessed March 8, 2021. "His career in literature began at age 19 as an intern for Scholastic, not long after graduating from Millburn High School in 1990."
  5. ^ a b Friedman, Robin. "The write stuff". New Jersey Jewish News (Whippany). July 2, 2009.
  6. ^ Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist Archived 2016-01-27 at the Wayback Machine, Random House. Accessed October 6, 2015. "He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey."
  7. ^ NGILBERT (23 January 2017). "2016 Edwards Award". Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2017.
  8. ^ "'The Collectors: Stories' wins 2024 Printz Award | ALA". www.ala.org. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  9. ^ Silvera, Adam (2021-02-27). "Out of the Wardrobe". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2021-02-28. Retrieved 2021-02-28.
  10. ^ 10 Things I Hate About You. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 0439087309
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